I serve on a tech advisory committee for a local school district. I am unforgiving on a single point: students need access to a development environment -- or at least the ability to install software -- or else these computers are just consumables.
I've suggested numerous setups to get around all of the excuses tech people at the district give. Would you mind sharing personal contact info for either yourself or your IT staff so that I can go to administration with a "this works in practice, here, go see" argument?